WINSLOW, Thomas I

Thomas’s father William Winslow had been a member of the household of Richard II, from whom he received several annuities and offices, including that of the post of King’s pavillioner which he held from 1395 until his master lost the throne. Following the accession of Henry of Bolingbroke he retired from Court, and took no part in local administration save as a tax collector in Wiltshire in 1413. He died shortly before March 1414. Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vi. 110-11. William’s property at Ramsbury was said to be worth no more than £5 p.a. in 1412, but, since it consisted of a manor and some 450 acres of land this may have been an under-valuation. Feudal Aids, vi. 533. In any case, this was not the full extent of his territorial holdings, for on his brother-in-law’s death in 1407 his wife Agnes Poure had inherited lands and rents in Oxfordshire at Black Bourton by Bampton, Wendlebury and Charlton-on-Otmore, and in Berkshire at Garford, which were worth more than £23 a year. CIPM, xix. 226-7; CCR, 1405-9, p. 299; VCH Oxon. vi. 82. When William died these estates attracted the attention of Robert Andrew, the influential Wiltshire lawyer and estate manager, who married the widowed Agnes, The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 35-38. and thus held her Winslow dower and Poure inheritance until his death in April 1437. Andrew’s close connexion with members of the affinity of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, to which he himself belonged, was to have a significant effect on the life and career of his stepson Thomas Winslow, especially as he appointed one of its leaders, his friend John Throckmorton, to assist his widow in executing his will. Within six months, Throckmorton and Agnes arranged for her son Thomas to marry one of Throckmorton’s daughters, and for a settlement on the couple in remainder of an estate at Eldersfield in Worcestershire and the manor of ‘Brians’ in Wantage, Berkshire, both of which Agnes held for life. CP40/787, rot. 520; CAD, vi. C5242.

First recorded at Michaelmas 1437, a few months after his stepfather’s death, Winslow was then party to the transfer to his mother of land in Wantage, CAD, vi. C5530. and he entered his maternal inheritance on her death, which occurred before October 1443, when he and his wife exercised their right of advowson at Wendlebury. Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vi. 126. Meanwhile, his public career had begun with service as escheator in Gloucestershire in 1440-1, although how he came to be appointed to this office in a county where he had no known landed interests is difficult to explain. Discrepancies in his financial accounts resulted in the temporary confiscation of some land in Redmarley in Worcestershire. E199/46/35. It was in the latter county that he chose to reside in the 1440s. There, he held the manor of Marsh Court in Eldersfield, which had previously been in the possession of his mother and stepfather. To this he added property in Chaddesley, Castlemorton and Longdon, the last including the manor of Hill Court. The chronology of this process of acquisition is problematic, but it had begun by 1444, and Hill Court was quitclaimed to him and his wife in 1450, while he was sitting in his first Parliament. CP40/787, rot. 520; Feudal Aids, v. 326; VCH Worcs. iv. 79, 114; CCR, 1447-54, p. 248; 1454-61, p. 32.

During the 1440s Winslow was frequently recorded in association with members of his wife’s family, notably his brothers-in-law Thomas Throckmorton* and John Throckmorton II*, who both represented Worcestershire in the course of the decade. He attested the electoral indenture recording Thomas’s return to the Parliament of February 1449. Some five years earlier they had been linked together in a petition sent to Chancery by the wife of Sir William Peyto‡, the Warwickshire knight then a prisoner in France, who alleged that they and several other ‘esquires’ had assembled a gang of 300 armed men to attack her tenants on the estates she held at Campden and elsewhere in Gloucestershire as dower from her previous husband, Thomas Stafford†. Katherine noted that the principal perpetrator was a ‘feed-man’ to the abbot of Pershore, and thus to ‘my lord of Warwick’ (Henry Beauchamp), and it looks as if Winslow and the rest were acting in the interest of the young earl. C1/15/77; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 68. In Katherine’s petition Winslow was described as living at ‘Corslaunde’, but this place cannot now be identified.

Throughout the 15 years following his alleged offence, Winslow was a member of the Worcestershire bench, as one of the quorum, which strongly suggests that he had been trained in the law. Perhaps his stepfather had encouraged him to enter the profession. Winslow was elected to the second Parliament of 1449 as a knight of the shire while he was so engaged. In 1451 he and his wife brought a suit against Sir Hugh Mortimer, alleging that he had dispossessed them of the estate at Eldersfield which they held by virtue of the settlement made at the time of their marriage. Despite being awarded damages of 100 marks at an assize of novel disseisin, six years later they had still not obtained justice, and the case had been referred to the court of common pleas. Meanwhile, Winslow had taken out a pardon as ‘formerly of Eldersfield and Ramsbury, gentleman’, on 17 Nov. 1452, but for what reason is unknown. CP40/770, rot. 415; 787, rot. 520; C67/40, m. 4. Similarly, the political circumstances leading to his second election to Parliament, this time as shire knight for Wiltshire in 1455, remain unclear.

Before that second election, in November 1454 Winslow had appeared in the King’s bench to stand bail for John Borne, the nephew of his late stepfather, who, a prisoner in the Marshalsea, had to find four bailsmen, each prepared to put up the sum of £20 to guarantee his good behaviour. KB27/774, rex rot. 5. Yet it seems that Winslow fell into financial difficulties later in the decade. This may be the explanation for his decision, at the end of 1456, to sell the manor of ‘Brians’, worth 14 marks a year, to John Roger I*. The sale, which raised 240 marks, was confirmed in a collusive suit brought in the court of common pleas in the following Hilary term. CAD, vi. C4551; CP40/784, rot. 120d; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vi. 120. The bond in 100 marks which Winslow entered in Feb. 1457 to William York the elder, one of the feoffees, formed part of these transactions: C146/873. Two years later he resorted to the same court to sue Sir Edward Neville of Kent for a substantial debt of nearly £118. CP40/788, rot. 91. During the same period of the late 1450s Winslow and his wife started to make provision for their four daughters. In 1456 they put a substantial amount of property in Wiltshire (40 messuages and some 750 acres of land in Ramsbury and elsewhere) into the hands of feoffees, headed by Henry Hale senior, probably as guarantee of the inheritance of their daughter Joan, who married Hale’s son and namesake. Then, with the help of Thomas Throckmorton, early in 1458 a settlement was made for the marriage of the eldest girl, Elizabeth, to John, son of James Terumber, a wealthy clothier from Trowbridge. The groom’s father was to have for 20 years the manor of Even Swindon and land in Henton and Bishopston, Wiltshire, and the former Poure manors of Bourton and Wendlebury, Oxfordshire, as well as the advowson of Wendlebury church, provided that he founded a chantry in Bradford, Wiltshire, to which he would grant the advowson, or else provide an annuity of ten marks to find a priest to sing in perpetuity for the souls of Winslow and his wife. Winslow also settled on the young couple other lands at Rotebourne. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 622; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 285, 296; VCH Wilts. ix. 121; Miscellanea Genealgica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vi. 126.

In the second half of the 1450s Winslow fell out with Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, who challenged his title to the estate at Ramsbury in a plea in King’s bench, which also involved Winslow’s daughter Joan Hale and her husband and father-in-law, on whom he had settled the property. The bishop obtained judgement and damages against them in Hilary term 1458. KB27/781, rot. 108; 787, rot. 25. Winslow’s removal from the Worcestershire bench in the following year is a strong indication that he was viewed with suspicion by the Lancastrian government, and in the wake of the proscription of the Yorkist lords at the Parliament at Coventry he may have gone on the run. He saw fit in March 1460 to place his moveable chattels for safekeeping in the hands of friends (headed by his brother-in-law Thomas Throckmorton). CCR, 1461-7, pp. 80-81. No evidence survives to show if he fought at Northampton or at the battles in the early months of 1461, but it seems very likely that he did provide tangible support to the house of York at that time for Edward IV rewarded him with the offices of steward of Marlborough and Devizes and of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Berkshire and Hampshire, the latter in a grant made to him for life in December 1461. But he did not live to hold them for long. The duchy post was granted to someone else just a year later, on 27 Dec. 1462, and Winslow was certainly dead by 31 Mar. 1463, when George Darell obtained the other stewardship. Somerville, i. 627; DL37/30/46; 31/75; CPR, 1461-7, p. 274. A later petition from Winslow’s widow held that he died in the King’s service at the siege of Alnwick. SC8/344/E1309.

Winslow’s estates were divided between his daughters. Elizabeth’s husband John Terumber must have died without issue for it was her children by her second husband, Humphrey, a younger son of (Sir) John Seymour I* of Wolf Hall in Great Bedwyn, to whom Even Swindon and Wendlebury descended. Her sister Isabel, who married Humphrey’s brother Ralph Seymour, sold her inheritance (the manors of Marsh Court in Eldersfield and Hill Court in Longdon) to Sir Richard Croft† in 1476. A third daughter, Agnes, married John Giffard of Twyford; and the fourth, Joan Hale, produced two daughters who married two of the sons of John Filoll* of Dorset. The division of Thomas Winslow’s estates between his various coheirs almost inevitably led to suits in Chancery between his descendants in the early sixteenth century. VCH Wilts. ix. 121; xii. 23; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vi. 124-5; C1/240/18; 313/32; 316/76; CP25(1)/294/76/109. Our MP’s widow petitioned the prince of Wales and his council (at some point before 1483), to complain that Croft had deprived her of her jointure: SC8/344/E1309.